Tis Only a Flesh Wound
by Hapalochlaena
Summary: "You shot me!" "It was an accident." "You fucking shot me! How is that an accident? I was right goddamn in front of you." "Well-" "And you shot me."


"You _shot_ me!"

"It was an accident."

"You fucking _shot_ me! How is that an accident? I was right goddamn in front of you."

"Well-"

"And you shot me."

"It's barely a flesh wound."

"I'm still bleeding damnit."

"That just means your blood is washing out any particles that may still be in the wound."

"No, that means it is significantly more than a motherfu-"

Phil cut the comm line, and rubbed at his forehead, trying to stave off the headache that was brewing behind his eyes. He lifted his head and glared at his screen, switching the comm's back on.

"I regret ever getting assigned to you two," he said mildly.

"Aw, you love us, boss," Phil could practically hear Clint grinning.

"To be fair, Phil probably regrets having to deal with your complaining of minor wounds," Natasha was cut off by Clint's outraged squawk.

Phil allowed a grin to cross his face and stretched carefully in the cramped space of the mobile unit. He listened for a few more minutes to the bickering agents, before he opened his comm to interrupt again.

"Debriefing will take place at eighteen-hundred hours. I expect that you will be in checked out in medical well before that," Phil said dryly.

"Absolutely, Boss," Clint said.

"I'll even make sure he isn't bleeding when we get back," Natasha replied.

Phil switched off the comm before letting out the disbelieving snort he had barely held at bay. He glanced over to Jasper's laughing form and rolled his eyes.

"Let's roll out in ten, I want to be back in New York by fourteen-hundred hours," Phil stood and readjusted his suit. He stepped out into the drizzling rain of northern illinois and opened the door to a black SUV, looking forward to the clean orderly office that awaited him.

Clint leaned back in his seat after removing the comm from his ear, then immediately sat forward with a hiss. A small syringe found its way into his line of sight, courtesy of Natasha.

"A local anesthetic," she said without looking at him.

Clint nodded and took it, pulling the cap off with his teeth and injecting it into his arm right above his injury. A moment later, he sighed in relief as the pain abated. Clint put his seat down, and settled in for a nap. Once they reached New York he would be able to take a nice hot shower to wash off the grime of this mission, get Bruce to fix him up and avoid the hell out of medical. Needle happy fuckers.

* * *

A few days later, Phil found himself in the very familiar position of head in hands nursing the beginnings of a headache, this time at his desk rather than a van. Nearly everything involving Clint left Phil with a raging headache. He had never known someone with such a propensity for getting into trouble, blowing things (and himself) up, and in general being a nuisance. Phil sighed in frustration, and decided that he could go to the shooting range and he could pretend the targets resembled a certain agent, no one would have to know. He slid his clip out of his desk drawer and into his gun, looking forward to maybe getting rid of his tension headache.

He walked down the hall, nodding to agents he was more familiar with and even those he wasn't. That was mostly to watch them blanch and freak out. He didn't know who started those rumors about him taking out a gunman with a bag of gummi bears, but he had a feeling their names may start with C or N. Anyway, the rumors were wrong. There were two gunmen, not one and it was a bag of flour, not gummi bears. Funnily enough the agents he passed were more afraid of his smile than his blank face.

* * *

Clint was stuck. He was (attempting) to infiltrate an enemy base, but had gotten wedged in the junction of a vent, unfortunately right above a room with some of his targets, and couldn't get out without making enough noise to get noticed in an awful way. Natasha was going to judge him so hard for this.

"Agent, do you have the drive?" His handler for the mission, Agent Smythe, buzzed in on his comm in annoyance, Clint couldn't respond due to his shitty position. "Goddamnit, Agent! Is it so hard for you to listen to orders?"

Clint pulled out his comm, not interested in hearing Agent Smythe spew his vitriol at him. Then he hunkered down to wait, listening to the muted conversations below him hoping to glean some useful information if possible. The volume in the room suddenly increased and Clint held his breath. He hadn't left anything to indicate his presence, but sometimes shit happened. Gunshots rang out below him and there were thuds of bodies falling and shouts of surprise. Something thumped the underside of the vent he was inconveniently located in. He held his breath.

"Clint?" Natasha. He wiggled into the lowest vent and kicked out the vent cover. Sliding out, he was treated to the blank stare of Natasha. He could feel her judging him harshly. She held up a thumb drive, mission successful. She jerked her head to the door, time to move out. Clint followed morosely, knowing he would have to make up for his inconveniencing her with a humiliating spar. They slid out of the compound, two shadows on the ground, reaching his hidden car quickly. Clint slid underneath to check it hadn't been tampered with, and Natasha ensured it wasn't set to go off unexpectedly. Check done, he slid into the driver's side and they strapped in.

Moments later they were on the road, set to arrive at the local base in two to three hours for medical check and debriefing. Clint flicked the radio on and found a station with minimal teeny-bop music, needing something to calm the tenseness in his shoulders.

"Weren't you supposed to be in New York, Natasha?" Clint

"This shouldn't have been a mission for you," Natasha's voice was low, with a buzz of anger laid underneath. "This was more my skillset, but you got assigned to it. With a handler that is known for being less than careful with his assets."

Clint said nothing. He already knew all this. This wasn't the first time he had gotten a shit assignment in the last few months though, without having Phil or Natasha watching his back. They knew about those, but not how bad they were. Eyes only, and need to know. He was a little worried that the next assignment, Natasha wouldn't be able to get there in time, and he would just be the footnote on a mission file that no one would ever see. He was just too mouthy, too insubordinate, and too quirky. If Phil hadn't picked him up when he did, he would already have been rendered inactive by any means. Clint just focused on the road and the music, doing his best to ignore Natasha's heavy stare.

* * *

Clint was limping again, favoring his left side. Natasha growled low in her throat and narrowed her eyes at her friend who was oblivious to being watched. Someone squeaked near her and she turned to glare at the unfortunate junior agent that had come across her hiding spot. He paled drastically upon meeting her eyes and promptly turned and ran. Natasha huffed and turned her attention back to Clint. He had been gone for a few days for something that he was being evasive about, and hiding injuries.

Natasha turned on her heel and resolved to keep a better eye on him. For now, she would record her observations just in case they became useful.

* * *

A few weeks after the mission where Natasha winged Clint, Phil was more than a little pissed. He was missing his asset, and he wasn't getting the answers he needed. Clint's medical records had been growing at an alarming rate, and none of the missions that he knew of had contributed to that list substantially. Clint had also become alarmingly quiet recently. Phil hated that. Clint was supposed to be loud, cheeky and perpetually immature. Not quiet and respectful. Phil had spent years trying to coax him into that behavior, and it had worked on some level; Clint was excellent on behaving just well enough to not get called out or written up. Now that he was actually following regulations and proper behavior, Phil found himself hating it with a passion.

A _snap_ brought his attention back to the present and he stared at the pen pieces and resultant ink splatter with disgust. He slid open a drawer in his desk and pulled out the wipes usually reserved for blood splatter and gun oil spills and started to clean up the mess. He was feeding the ruined forms he had been working on into the shredder when there was a soft knock followed by the click of his door being opened. He looked up to see Natasha slip into the office with a small frown, which was for her akin to a snarl of fury.

"What happened?" Phil almost dreaded getting an answer.

"A mission for Clint that I...tagged along on," She grimaced. "It was not suitable for his skillset, and had I not interfered he likely would have at the very least been in medical. Though that would also be a stretch, given that his support was at least a half hour away, if they broke a few speed laws."

"Who was in charge of the operation?" Phil was going to shoot out somebody's knee caps, and they would be lucky if that was all he did.

"Agent Smythe," Her eyes glimmered with barely suppressed rage.

Phil stilled, mind racing. There were very few people that had a higher clearance than him, or were able to assign handlers to his agents. That left only a handful with those who weren't very fond of Clint or outright hated him. Still, that gave him plenty to work with.

"I trust you will get the necessary information on why that _incompetent agent_ had access to Clint." It wasn't a question, Natasha would find exactly what they were looking for. Hopefully they wouldn't have to worry about Clint getting into anything until then.

Natasha nodded sharply and was out the door again with nary a sound.

* * *

Natasha owed Clint. More than he would know or that she would acknowledge. Clint brought...color to her life. He had rescued her from being hunted down by the organization that trained her. Clint even went so far as to bring her into the Agency as a new recruit despite the kill order that was out for her. He had a gun trained on her and he could have easily killed her, but he chose not to. Clint had given her an out instead. An out of the life she hated, on the run and working random jobs that threatened to lead her previous employer's right to her. He was her shelter now, alternately annoying and making her laugh.

When she found the person responsible for his sudden rash of inexplicable injuries and withdrawn behavior, she was going to show them all of the things she could do with her garrote. Their death would be drawn out and as painful as possible. Natasha would make them regret causing such a change in Clint.

Natasha slipped into the office, thin gloves in place. She skimmed the labels on the file cabinets. Steps sounded in the hall outside the door, and Natasha slipped in the space between the last file cabinet and the wall, waiting for the person to leave. A moment later she returned and opened up a drawer. She skimmed along the folders, sporadically pulling out the ones that caught her eye.

Grabbing the pile Natasha flipped them open taking pictures of the files, and carefully put them back. She was in and out within fifteen minutes, and soon was on her way back to her apartment to peruse the documents uninterrupted. She texted Phil their predetermined code for success, and sped home to wait for his arrival.

* * *

Clint was so very fucked right now. He was stuck again, less than a month after the last time, in a cell instead of a vent though. Also, bleeding. He had been worked over pretty well before being thrown in the cell and he had lost track of a couple hours since then. He turned over and gasped at the pain shooting up his body. A couple of possibly cracked ribs.

It was massively bad intel this time. He walked right into a trap and probably wasn't going to walk out of it. He had thought something was going on more than a few missions ago, but he had been hoping his paranoia was just rearing its ugly head again. He hissed as he twisted himself into a less painful position on the hard concrete beneath him. It was cold in his cell, with a musty old smell of disuse. Clint rested his aching head on the cool concrete. He carefully reached out an arm to check if there was anything more comfortable near him, like a mat or, hell, a blanket. Cracking his eyes open didn't give him any sense of something nearby, so he closed them again in pain.

Nothing here except his bloody body and water dripping somewhere out of his line of sight. He tried opening his eyes again, once he realized they had closed on him, but they were stuck together with the blood dripping from a cut above his eye and they were just so heavy. His last coherent thought was wondering if Phil and Natasha had even realized he was missing.

* * *

"Agent Smythe, I do hope you are comfortable," Phil sat down across from the tied up man.

Phil looked past the now struggling agent to trade a look with Natasha. She glided forward without a sound to alert Smythe to her presence. She plunged a syringe into his neck and stepped back. Phil let Smythe swear for a few moments, waiting until he began slurring his words. Phil leaned forward, getting Smythe's attention.

"I need you to answer some questions. The serum currently making its way through your body is a drug that, essentially, prohibits you from lying to me." Phil smiled at the sweating man. "Now, your mission a few weeks ago with one of my agents, why don't you tell me why he was assigned to that?"

* * *

Phil was enraged. Seventeen missions Clint had been sent on that had nearly put him out of commission or outright killed him. The only reason he wasn't dead or in a damned coma was his predilection for ignoring directions and picking his own perches and his ability to improvise. But this? This was an attack on _his_ asset. He was Clint's primary handler, because he was the only one Clint listened to. All requests for Clint to be on a mission had to come from that handler to him for approval. He had not gotten any requests or notifications for these missions. All of them short enough that Clint would be back before he was missed, and always with another injury that he brushed off as unimportant. Phil was kicking himself, for not noticing what was happening, or pushing Clint more when he was clearly lying.

He glanced up at the sound of breaking glass. Natasha was clearly not handling this any better than he was, by her uncharacteristic show of anger.

"Why didn't that _idiot_ ever say anything," She seethed.

"Because he's a noble idiot with a skewed sense of self-preservation," Phil carefully set the files in his hands down, determined not to completely lose it. "He doesn't want us to become targets for protecting him."

"Except he has allowed himself to become more vulnerable because of this," Natasha stood bruskly and pulled out her cellphone. "He doesn't want to risk your position in the Agency, or for me to be burned to my previous...employers."

The sharp staccato sound of typing helped Phil come out of his rage more. Until she swore angrily.

"He isn't picking up," Phil felt a shiver of panic race up his spine, and pulled out his own phone to send a message to every one of Clint's numbers with the code to give an immediate report. The longer without an answer set the curl of worry in stomach tighter and tighter. He started typing in a different number and waited while it rang.

"I need to call in that favor," Phil looked at Natasha, she nodded and started preparations to go in guns blazing.

* * *

Clint woke up shivering and stiff all over. He panicked when he couldn't open his eyes before he remembered the blood that had been dripping in them before he passed out. It took a few minutes, his stomach roiling with his pain filled movements and trying to use numb fingers to rub off the tacky blood. He was having trouble breathing through his damaged ribs, and his throat was parched.

He looked around with blurry eyes trying to identify where he was. The bloodstains on the floor said he hadn't been moved, and if anyone had been in the cell they hadn't gotten close enough to disturb anything. The concrete floor was cracked and pitted, probably heavy use at some point. A pipe coming through the wall was dripping one of the back corners, and there weren't any windows to tell time by.

Clint didn't think he had been passed out for more than four or five hours, but it was impossible to tell. He slid closer to the bars of the cell wanting to get a good look at the lock keeping him in. Electronic lock, coded. Shit.

He sat with his back against the wall struggling to breathe through a sudden spike of panic. He forced himself to calm down and looked up through his eyelashes for a camera. Nothing obvious from this end. Clint tried standing when his vision swam alarmingly and then the floor was really close to his face and-

* * *

Natasha flicked open the lock on the dilapidated building, sliding in without a sound.

"Second corridor on your right," She gave no indication she had heard Phil's order in the comm except to turn into the second corridor with a glance down to check it was clear.

"Heat signatures put three men thirty feet in front of you and to the left," Natasha padded down the hallway, counting the feet until she reached a door that had voices on the other side.

"Two more coming your way, turning from the right hallway ten feet in front of you...now," Natasha met the first one with a stab to the throat and the second with a burst from a modified taser. She paused, waiting to see if there had been any notice of the fight. When no reaction was forthcoming she walked down the hallway the two men had come from.

"Stairs to your right and mind the two men guarding it," Natasha took them down easily, and left them bleeding out.

"The signal is cutting out, I can't tell how many are down there. Be careful," Natasha made it down the stairs without any obstruction.

Her luck ran out when a guard spotted her coming down the hallway and opened his mouth to shout a warning to his fellows through the open doorway he was guarding. She took a headshot and he dropped, the sudden thud of his falling body and the pop of the silencer had the other two guards pouring out of the room. She managed to shoot one before the other reached her. He still went down quickly from two stab wounds to the abdomen. She stepped in for a quick check of the room to make sure she hadn't missed anyone, but a glance at the screens the guards had been watching propelled her into the room.

Clint was on the ground, bloody and unmoving. Natasha felt fear crawl up her throat until he rolled over, and she let out a breathe. Still alive then. Good, she was going to kill him herself after this. She moved back into the hallway, gun at the ready. She only met one more guard, he didn't even know she was there until there was a bullet in his skull.

She found him a few cells from the doorway, she breathed a sigh of relief to see he was still alive if rather battered. She pulled out her lock picking kit before she realized that the lock was electronic and required a code to open it. She shorted it out instead, and immediately went in to check on Clint.

"You idiot," Natasha hissed at him.

"Natasha?" Clint's voice was barely a whisper, but Natasha still caught it.

"Can you walk?" They didn't have too long until the other guards realized there was an enemy in the base.

Clint sucked in a breath and levered himself up slowly. Natasha pulled his left arm over her shoulder and shoved a gun in his free hand. She also handed him a comm, knowing he would need Phil's voice in his ear. They crept back up the stairs, bypassing Natasha's earlier kills. They heard shouting down the hallway, blocking their exit. Clint's hand was steady, even if he could barely walk on his own. One of the men turned down the hallway and was promptly met with a bullet to his heart. Once his compatriots saw him drop, they immediately came around the corner guns blazing. Natasha and Clint took cover in an open doorway.

"You better be in one piece, Agent."

Clint grinned at the bland voice in his ear.

"May I say, sir, that I have never been so glad to hear your voice," Clint watched Natasha step out into the hallway during a break in the gun fire. She spun back in as another, smaller burst out. He handed her another clip. After she shot down the hallway again there was no return fire.

Natasha pulled Clint's arm back over her shoulders, and they left the building without any further interruption.

"Report," Phil sounded crisply in their ears.

"Clint-" Natasha was cut off by Clint.

"Tis only a flesh wound," There was dead silence for a moment.

"If you're actually missing an arm, Agent, we will have words," Clint laughed, then stopped, wincing from the forgotten damaged ribs.

"The idiot has a couple of cracked, maybe broken ribs, a few contusions and is bleeding from several cuts," Natasha cut in bruskly.

Clint grinned, and listened to what was going to turn into a substantial lecture, feeling like everything was turning out right in his world.

"Wait, how did you guys know where I was?" Clint broke in the middle of Phil's lecture.

"I called in a favor and took care of the...instigator," Phil paused delicately. "The warehouse on Fifth avenue was due for a demolition in a couple weeks anyway."

Clint couldn't stop his chortle, his cracked-maybe-broken ribs be damned.


End file.
